Conference Workshops
Thursday, September 23, from 11 AM - 4 PM
(Check-in at 10:45)
FICTION BOOT CAMP: The Essential A to Zs of Storytelling
Taught by Edmund Schubert
(Limited to 15 people)
Whether you're writing short stories, novels, or creative nonfiction, there are narrative elements that must be mastered: dialogue, pacing, metaphors, plotting, characterization, etc. These are all important technical issues. But how well you write and how you approach story are not the same issue and, arguably, "story" is both more important and more likely to be overlooked. Writing well is the icing on the cake; story is where the substance and real flavor lives.
So how do you make a story uniquely your own? What are you trying to say and why? How can you use technical elements like dialogue and characterization to advance and improve your story? This five-hour workshop will explore all of these questions and more, offering fresh insights into the writing process whether you're a brand-new writer or published many times over.
HRW will provide a boxed lunch
Anyone attending this optional workshop may pre-purchase (at time of registration) a $26 plated dinner for the pre-conference dinner (4:45 - 6 PM on Sept 23) with conference faculty and HRW board members; dinner options include chicken, pasta with sausage, or vegan.
Thursday, September 23, 7 - 9 PM
How to Get an Agent in 10 Minutes: Real time pitch practice with tips and tricks for securing your dream Agent
If you managed to snag one or more ten-minute agent pitches at this conference, CONGRATULATIONS! This golden opportunity to meet one-on-one with an agent and put a face to your name and project, will allow you to distinguish yourself from the thousands of other hopeful writers who haven't pitched and whose query letters are buried on the agents' desks. Workshop attendees will learn those things that go into a successful pitch and how best to increase the chances that the agent might say, "Wow. I’m intrigued. Send a synopsis and the entire manuscript!"
Presented by Kristina Slater
Scrivener Crash Course
Scrivener is a streamlined and user-friendly word processor that offers more to the writer than Microsoft Word or Mac Pages ever could. It's designed for writing projects. You can organize your books, chapters, short stories, scenes, character sheets, setting descriptions, outlines, and anything else you can think of all in one easy-to-access document, which allows you to seamlessly switch between each element. To use the program to its full capacity, new users to the program need to know where to start. And experienced users are often unaware of the near-limitless customization and treasure trove of advanced features available to them. Combining visual and hands-on exercises, this workshop will teach you the basics of this amazing program and allow your writing projects to soar. This is for people with little to no experience in Scrivener. Participants must own a copy of Scrivener, or download the free trial, and bring it with them on their laptop. The program is available on the App Store, Microsoft Marketplace, and via their website: [https://www.literatureandlatte.com.] It is heavily suggested to download directly from their website to take advantage of update deals.
Presented by Chris De Matteo
Journaling as a Path Toward Health, Personal Growth, and Creativity
The benefits of meditative journaling are wide ranging and profound. Studies show it improves physiological and psychological health and strengthens physical and emotional resiliency, which boosts artistic creativity. This two-hour course will offer extensive information about how to use this type of journaling to significantly improve your quality of life as well as your writing.
Presented by Sandra E. Johnson
Screenplay workshop
Attendees should bring in 5 - 15 pages of their script for group workshopping.
Presented by Matt Friedman
I Have a Nonfiction Manuscript: Constructing Nonfiction Proposals
How do you convey a comprehensive and vivid image of your nonfiction book when all you have are a title and some sample chapters? By creating a detailed nonfiction proposal! This workshop will break down the essential components of a nonfiction proposal (including: Introductions, Comp. Titles, Chapter Outlines, and Sample Chapters) and how they work to make your nonfiction book come to life.
Presented by Terry Cox-Joseph
Friday, September 24, 10:45 AM - 12:15 PM
So You Think You Can Dialogue
During this 90-minute workshop, attendees will learn how to recognize and create real, authentic dialogue that enriches their novels and short stories. By sharing their dialogue out loud with a partner in a non-threatening setting, participants will explore how best to perfect the dialogue and make their characters come alive, showing actions and emotions through their words. Come prepared to write a little.
Presented by Kristina Slater
Great Expectations: The Importance of Wanting in Fiction
One of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Rules of Writing” is to make sure your main character always wants something, even if it’s just a glass of water. Yet somehow the single most vital tool in a storyteller’s toolkit is often overlooked or held back from the reader for far too long.
Presented by Edmund Schubert
Basics of Screenwriting Software and Formatting
Attendees will learn how screenwriting software can help make their jobs easier and will dig into all the nuts and bolts of formatting scripts to industry standards.
Presented by Matt Friedman
Shape Shifting - Persona Poems and Shifting Voice
Let your poems run wild as you experiment with persona. We'll get out of our own heads, put on the mask of persona and inhabit the voice of another through our poems. We'll explore masters of the persona poem, play with historical subjects, fantasy characters and inanimate objects and learn techniques to channel the voice of another in our work. Join the masquerade!
Presented by Kindra McDonald
Friday and Saturday (September 24 - 25, 2021)
The Art of the personal essay
This session will be focused on turning key experiences from your life, joyful or difficult, into artfully rendered prose. We will be studying various forms of the essay, the lyric, the list, as well as the traditional narrative. We’ll examine how master authors make use of research, scene setting, and realistic dialogue to create fully embodied narratives. In addition, we’ll study how authors manipulate time in their essays to create suspenseful stories that unfold in a precise and powerful way.
As a group, we’ll work on creating those realistic scenes and discussing which narrative form suits our stories. Last, we’ll be discussing the ambiguous nature of our own experiences and the essay itself. The essay was traditionally understood to be an attempt at something, and this workshop will be centered around that exploration of our relationship to our families, our worlds, and ourselves.
Presented by Andrew Bertaina
Fabulist and Surrealist Flash Fiction
In our busy lives, we don’t always have time to write a novel or a long short story. Thus, this breakout session will be focused on creating short narratives, 1,000 words and under that incorporate elements of the surreal or fabulous. How do we create fully recognizable worlds in a limited time space? How have masters of the form, Borges, Calvino, Kelly Link, handled the inclusion of fantastic or surreal elements in their narratives? How can we create fully realized and recognizable worlds that our readers believe in?
The session will also cover the varieties of flash, ranging from traditional narrative to the prose poem. In addition, we’ll be discussing the importance of creating vivid and memorable sentences, snappy dialogue and endings that pack a strong narrative punch.
Presented by Andrew Bertaina
Podcasting for Writers
With podcasting figures growing at an exponential rate every month, we can no longer afford to ignore this medium. This workshop will give hints and tips for both setting up your own podcast and rocking as a guest on other podcasts.
Presented by Leslye Penelope
Public Speaking for Writers
The tools you will need to speak with confidence and clarity whilst entertaining and engaging your audience.
Presented by Leslye Penelope
Writing a Killer Marketing Plan
Planning is key when it comes to marketing your books. This interactive workshop will provide an overview of what a killer marketing plan should contain and give participants space to write their own marketing plan.
Presented by Leslye Penelope
Organizing Your Writing Life
We become authors because we love to write, but there seem to be an endless number of tasks to manage on top of actually getting a manuscript completed. How can we manage the writing along with the admin work, promotion, and everything else? If you're feeling overwhelmed, distracted, and not as productive as you'd like, then you are not alone, but there are systems, tools, and strategies you can use to help put your writing life in order and reclaim some mental freedom. Attendees will learn organizational and productivity tips to help de-stress, achieve their goals, and get those words on the page.
Presented by Leslye Penelope
I Wrote the Book, Now What?: A Strategic Approach to Finding An Agent
After spending countless hours writing and revising your novel, finding the right agent to represent you can suddenly seem like the hard part! This workshop will help you create a comprehensive game plan for finding the right pool of agents to submit to.
Presented by Matt Belford
The Five Things an Agent Needs to Represent a Manuscript
There are quite a few things that literary agents are looking for and evaluating as they read a query letter and manuscript. Find out how an agent thinks about your work and ultimately decides whether or not to offer representation.
Presented by Matt Belford
How to Pitch a Graphic Novel: Building a Graphic Novel Submission Beyond Finished Artwork
You’ve seen the advice of countless agents and editors on how to write a query letter, but how does that translate to Graphic Novels? In this workshop, we’ll go over what makes a great graphic novel pitch and some DOs and DON'Ts for you to follow.
Presented by Matt Belford
Making Your Synopsis Stand Out
A synopsis, whether on its own or embedded in your query letter, is a crucial tool to help capture the interest of an agent. What information should you include versus not? How long should it be? Should it be told from the voice of the author or a character? How does this differ from cover copy? In this workshop, we will discuss the importance of synopses and learn how to summarize your book in the most captivating manner possible.
Presented by Jessica Errera
What’s in an Agent’s Wish-List?
A lot of times you see/hear about an agent or editor’s elusive “wish-list”—they’re looking for things like upmarket fiction, book club fiction, work that straddles the literary/commercial divide. But what do these terms mean? And what if my work straddles more than one label? There are more questions than genres! In this workshop we will discuss and define these terms using relevant examples, and offer tools on how to best categorize your work.
Presented by Jessica Errera
Characterization is Key
One of the most rewarding aspects of reading are characters that stay with you after the last page has been turned. What makes one character memorable and relegates another to a footnote? This workshop will focus on how to craft unique, layered characters that give your book dimension and keep readers invested.
Presented by Jessica Errera
Memoir Writing
Everyone has a story to tell. According to Mark Twain, “There never was yet an uninteresting life. Inside the dullest exterior, there is a drama, a comedy, a tragedy.” This workshop will help each attendee decide his or her story and audience. It will address the various types of memoirs, the pitfalls of memoir writing, and the need to decide early the main message you want your memoir to convey. The workshop will go over the differences between a memoir and biographies and autobiographies as part of helping the author focus.
Presented by David Cariens (Author of a textbook on memoir writing and his own memoir, Escaping Madness)
Spy Stories and Novels—Getting the Details Right
In all writing, the devil is in the details and all too often writers trying their hand at spy stories mix up the facts and details. The workshop will go over some basics of the U.S. Intelligence Community and how the same words mean different things to various members. For example, many people mistakenly called the James Bond character in their story an agent. That is fine for the FBI, but not for the CIA. The instructor will address some of the idiosyncrasies of the Intelligence and Law Enforcement communities.
Presented by David Cariens (A retired CIA Intelligence Analyst, author of two textbooks on Intelligence Analysis, and two books analyzing real crimes—the two school shootings in Virginia.)
Editing, Not Correcting
The sign of a good writer is one who seeks and welcomes editorial feedback. It is rare an author’s work needs little editing. Most of us require an editor’s eyes to polish and improve our prose. Before your manuscript goes to an editor, you—the author—should do your own editing. The workshop will go over The Four Sweeps every author should use prior to submitting his or her work to an agent, editor, or publisher. Time permitting, participants will be asked to do a quick editing exercise to cut out the word garbage in a draft.
Presented by David Cariens (A former editor at the joint BBC-Open Source Center outside London, and a published author.)
DENIAL AND DECEPTION—A Critical Part of Crime and Espionage Writing
This workshop will examine how both spies and criminals use denial and deception, social media, and overhead photography to carry out nefarious activities, and the problems these actions pose for law enforcement and counterintelligence. The instructor will review two cases—one criminal, the other espionage—in examining cover stories. Often criminal activity intersects with espionage—for example in financial activity such as transferring money internationally, laundering money, and setting up front organizations. Both criminals and spies share four main goals: how to remain anonymous while planning and carrying out criminal actions; how to handle or transfer money; how to maintain and support a normal way of living (keep a low profile to avoid detection), and in some cases how to camouflage an escape.
Presented by David Cariens (retired CIA officer with over 50 years experience working in intelligence and crime analysis. He is the author of two textbooks on intelligence and crime analysis.)
Building Better Worlds
A big part of writing is building a world for your characters to inhabit. It doesn’t matter if you write science fiction, fantasy, or something more down to Earth, one of the first things a writer must do is build their world. From something as simple as building a fictional town for your coming of age story, or literally building worlds and universes in the fantasy or science fiction genres, in this seminar you will learn the tricks for making believable and, more importantly, lived in, worlds for your readers to get lost in. You’ll learn how to develop exposition, craft lore, and add just the right amount of detail to hint at the greater world beyond your story. Together, we’ll learn how to interlace world-building exposition with narrative, and the best ways to introduce your reader to your world without bogging them down in pages and pages of non-stop detail. We’ll look at examples of good and bad world building, discuss tips and tricks for bringing your world to the page, and work together to craft a mini world of our very own.
Presented by Chris De Matteo
Just Say No...to Wikipedia: Historical Research Skills for Historical Fiction
Learn how to develop realistic historical fictions, by diving into the basics of historical research. You’ll start with a crash course in what it takes to conduct good historical research (identifying types of sources and how to dissect those sources). Then, we’ll move on to the little things: facts of life from the past that run the gamut from bizarre, to vital background minutiae that many visualize wrongly, which could ruin your story if ignored. Things like how horse travel wasn’t much faster than on-foot, while the Dark Ages weren’t really that dark, dirty, or technologically backwards. Buckle up, because history was often stranger than fiction. This seminar is designed for those without a history background breaking into the historical fiction genre, but all are welcome!
Presented by Chris De Matteo
Beyond Ray Guns and Elves: Dismantling the negative stereotypes of SF&F or Why Genre Fiction is One of the Best ways to Discuss the Human Condition
Science Fiction and Fantasy often get glossed over, even in a day and age with more popular acceptance than ever before. Go to a writer’s conference and odds are you’ll only see one token person talking about SF & F, if any at all. There is a tendency to brush genre off as “not-literature.” But nothing could be farther from the truth. In this workshop, you’ll learn what science fiction and fantasy can achieve, by examining some modern and historical examples. By stepping outside of our “real” world, SF&F turns a mirror back on it. It is only when you can put some distance from real-world problems, can you dig deeper into the real issues that make up the human condition.
Presented by Chris De Matteo
Understanding and Using Non-Linear Narrative Structures and Techniques (Applicable both to fiction and nonfiction writers)
Non-linear techniques present the reader with information in a different order than it was experienced by the character. Sounds simple enough. But how do you ensure it's more than a gimmick? Knowing when and why to use it is just as important as knowing how.
Presented by Edmund Schubert
Adversarial Dialogue: Writing Dialogue That Works
Having your characters say exactly what they mean and respond directly to each other's questions results in boring dialogue no one wants to read. Effective dialogue requires subtext, conflict, and for the author to remember that each character should always subtly pursue their own agenda.
Presented by Edmund Schubert
Short Story: The First 150 Words
Editors judge the vast majority of short stories in less than one page. How you get them to read beyond page one depends largely on what you do with the first 150 words. In this workshop, attendees will Learn how to make it past the 150 word hurdle that trips up so many other writers.
Presented by Edmund Schubert
Point Of View: Understanding and Using POV to Your Best Advantage
Attendees of this workshop will explore the pros and cons and misperceptions of various POVs when writing fiction and nonfiction.
Presented by Edmund Schubert
Writing SF and Fantasy
Science fiction and fantasy have become more popular and accessible than ever before. A lively overview of what defines the genre and how it has grown and evolved, along with tips for writing it well, presented by an award-winning editor with two decades working in the field.
Presented by Edmund Schubert
Sword and Sorcery: A Literary History for Writers
"Sword and sorcery" (S&S) is an enduring genre of secondary world fantasy that originates in the interwar pulp fiction of writers including Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Cimmerian. It blends pre-modern settings, supernatural horror, and action-packed narratives of swords against monsters and demented sorcerers. More recently, sword and sorcery fiction has become bound up with gaming in tabletop and video game mediums. Mainstream fantasists whose work has been adapted to video games, such as Andrej Sapkowski (The Witcher), have brought visibility to S&S writers who have always written for game-based fantasy settings, such as R.A. Salvatore (Dungeons and Dragons), Richard Knaak (World of Warcraft), and many more. This session will survey sword and sorcery fiction, describe its conventions, and speculate about its future, all in the service of preparing writers new to the genre to anticipate, and hopefully innovate, its perennial conventions.
Presented by Dr. Jason Carney
Techniques for Rendering Horror in Fantasy Fiction
Secondary world fantasy is a genre known for inspiring feelings of joy, wonder, and courage. In the green and mysterious worlds of fantasy, readers are given the opportunity to experience the premodern joys of village life, the wonders of a world imbued with magic and faerie, and the inspiring presence of courage in the face of great challenges. But there is another aesthetic experience associated with fantasy that is often unexplored by writers of this genre: horror. This class is based upon the premise that fantasy fiction is made more vital by appealing to a wider variety of emotions, horror specifically. In this class writers will be asked to consider the function of horror spectacle in fantasy fiction and to try their hands at techniques for incorporating horror that sticks with their readers.
Presented by Dr. Jason Carney
Finders Keepers - The Art of Found Poetry
We will explore the art and origins of found poetry from Dada movement and Oulipians, to visual collage poetry and abecedarian forms. We will channel our spontaneous sides to find poetry everywhere. With hands on experimentation in cut-ups, cross-outs, ransom notes and magnetic poetry, we will see poetry hiding in plain sight. Come play!
Presented by Kindra McDonald
Around the World in One Hour - Discovering International Poets
We'll explore both contemporary and ancient poets with origins abroad. We'll explore culture, customs, history, the immigrant experience and the cultural relevance of form. Poetry is the language of seeing beneath the surface, come travel!
Presented by Kindra McDonald
Hearing the Wind Speak - Eco-poetics and Nature as Poetic Muse
We'll explore poetry in the natural world, working deeply with a handful of poems by eco-poets and poets who use the natural world as their primary muse. We will work to hear the voice in the poetry, the “voices” in nature and develop our own poetic voice in response to those surroundings.
Presented by Kindra McDonald
Small But Mighty: Using Caesura, or Silence, in Your Work
Understanding the 10 types of caesura, or ways to create rest in a poem, can control both pacing and energy in a piece. Caesura are one of the most powerful tools in both poetry and prose, yet many times writers only use a habitual few. In this workshop we will look at the textures, psychological underpinnings, and pauses caesura can provide when used to their full range. We will look at work by Frank Bidart, ee cummings, Sappho, and other poets who used caesura well, as well as doing a generative exercise to start thinking about how to maximize caesura in our own work.
Presented by Kelly Morse
One Man Band: Using the Five Principles of Music in Poetry
We will look at five main principles of music: melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, and intensity, and how they can be translated into one's poetry. All of these aspects help create patterns and sonic contours to a poem, and when used consciously can make both metered and free-verse poetry pleasing to the ear. Understanding how the five principles are translated from music to verse, like how grape terroir translates into a wine's taste, can help poets avoid some of the pitfalls of coming from being a listener of lyrics to being a writer. We will look at poems that demonstrate these ideas, along with some generative exercises of these five principles.
Presented by Kelly Morse
Unwritten Contract: Structuring Poems So That They Elicit Trust and Intrigue in a Reader
Each poet or prose writer sets up a "contract" with their reader in the first few lines or paragraphs of a piece, whether the maker knows it or not. Understanding the metrical and sympathetic contracts you are offering your reader can be the difference between the reader engaging in the work or moving on to something else. In this workshop we will look at different ways poets and prose writers establish stable contracts, and then how to complicate and push against them so that the reader stays surprised yet trusts in the work. Participants will walk away with a metrical contract checklist they can use to analyse and revise their own work.
Presented by Kelly Morse
Little Rooms: How to Make the Most of Stanzas
Stanzas are a basic organizing principle of poetry, but often poets underestimate their potential for revision, flow, and underlying symbolism. Looking over a variety of examples of these "little rooms" participants will see how stanzas can be used to maximize how energy flows through a poem. For this workshop participants will be asked to bring a laptop or some form of technology where they can quickly change the stanza format of a draft in order to see how manipulating stanzas and white space can open up new possibilities for a poem.
Presented by Kelly Morse
Overcoming Writer's Block
Feeling Stuck? Attendees of this workshop will learn how to combat writer's block to keep their stories moving.
Presented by Lauren Bieker
The Importance of Voice
Fiction can be thought of as comprising two basic elements: Characters and what they do next (plot); and voice, which commits those characters to the page in a memorable way. Like listening to a singer who doesn’t quite hit the right notes, an audience knows instinctively when a performer is struggling or trying to "put one over" on them. If the voice of a piece of writing isn't genuine or appropriate, it won't be effective. Furthermore, if the elements of the craft of writing such as rhythm, style, language, and so forth are not properly supported the voice of a piece will fall flat. In this workshop, attendees will analyse use of voice in narrative, and how they can use that analysis to make their own work sing.
Presented by Lauren Bieker
So You Got an Agent, Now What? What to Expect When You're Expecting a Book Deal
What happens when an author is signed by an agent? What can the average author expect? How long does it typically take to sell a manuscript? Do new authors get advances against future sales and if so, how much? How many books must a new author sell in order for the publisher to ask for a second book. How long does it typically take from when a book is sold to when it comes out in print? Attendees of this workshop will learn the answers to these questions and more.
Presented by Lauren Bieker
How to Show, Not Tell
Learn how to replace dry exposition that keeps your story from getting off the ground with compelling action, dialogue, and imagery that make it spring to life. Learning this will help your book unfold in dynamic scenes that will make your work much more marketable.
Presented by Sandra E. Johnson
Eleven Steps to Getting Your Book Successfully Published
Breaking into the publishing industry is more competitive than ever. In this workshop, learn how to overcome the hurdles in eleven, straightforward steps.
Presented by Sandra E. Johnson
How to Create Time to Write
Frustrated that you’ve got great ideas for books, short stories, and essays, but no time to actually write them? In this workshop, find out how to create the time to transform your writing dreams into reality.
Presented by Sandra E. Johnson
Creating Quality Scenes and Characters for Screenplays
Attendees of this workshop will watch several filmclip scenes and talk about what sets a good scene apart from those that are less stellar. We'll also discuss how the characters in each clip can bring the scene to life.
Presented by Matt Friedman
Story Elements and Structure for Screenplays
Attendees will learn about three-act structure, beat sheets, and how screenplays can be analyzed and broken down into the elements that make up story.
Presented by Matt Friedman
Writing for Magazines: Avenues for publishing short nonfiction pieces—articles, essays, and more
In this workshop, Bill Glose shares his own roadmap to successful publication to show how to break in at magazines and keep landing assignments after you’ve kicked the door down. You will learn the basics of querying, editorial timelines and relationships, and the art of narrative nonfiction as it applies to both essays and articles.
Presented by Bill Glose
Feature Articles: Creating Fact-Based Journalistic Pieces
This session will focus on various structures and elements of feature articles. Special attention will be paid to research and fact-checking, editorial expectations, the art of the interview, and fillers (such as sidebars) that enhance a story’s flavor.
Presented by Bill Glose
Poetry as a Personal Odyssey
Following the dictum of doing what you love, this workshop will show poets how they can explore whatever theme, hobby, or territory intrigues them most to create poetry with real power. This workshop will show how to blend personal experience with historical and current events to create work that is universal. Participants will also create their own poem and be guided through an examination of their work.
Presented by Bill Glose
Blog Basics: Everything you need to know to launch a blog—conception, setting up, content, and attracting readers
Since 1984, when blogging jumped onto the scene, the field has grown exponentially. Blogging is popular, relatively easy, useful and even profitable. Writing a Web log (blog) is the easy part. Getting the word out is the hard part. Learn how to launch a blog from conception to set-up and how to attract readers. Learn how to network and use your online connections to expand your reach and promote your brand. And then, if you want to, learn how to monetize your blog.
Presented by Terry Cox-Joseph